“And Allen-—reposing on your honours?  Eh, my boy?”

Allen looked rather foolish, and said, “I spoilt it, papa, and hadn’t time to begin another.”

“It-—I suppose I am not to hear what till it has come to perfection.  Is it the same that was in hand last time?”

“No, papa, much better,” said Janet, emphatically.

“What I want to see,” said Dr. Brownlow, “is something finished.  I’d rather have that than ever so many magnificent beginnings.”

Here he was seized upon by Robert, with his knitted brow and a book in his hands, demanding aid in making out why, as he said, the tide swelled out on the wrong side of the earth.

His father did his best to disentangle the question, but Bobus was not satisfied till the clock chimed his doom, when he went off with Jock, who was walking on his hands.

“That’s too tough a subject for such a little fellow,” said the grandmother; “so late in the day too!”

“He would have worried his brain with it all night if he had not worked it out,” said his father.

“I’m afraid he will, any way,” said the mother.  “Fancy being troubled with dreams of surging oceans rising up the wrong way!”

“Yes, he ought to be running after the tides instead of theorising about them.  Carry him off, Mother Carey, and the whole brood, without loss of time.”

“But Joe, why should we not wait for you?  You never did send us away all forlorn before!” she said, pleadingly.  “We are all quite well, and I can’t bear going without you.”

“I had much rather all the chickens were safe away, Carey,” he said, sitting down by her.  “There’s a tendency to epidemic fever in two or three streets, which I don’t like in this hot weather, and I had rather have my mind easy about the young ones.”

“And what do you think of my mind, leaving you in the midst of it?”

“Your mind, being that of a mother bird and a doctor’s wife, ought to have no objection.”

“How soon does Dr. Drew come home?”

“In a fortnight, I believe.  He wanted rest terribly, poor old fellow.  Don’t grudge him every day.”

“A fortnight!” (as if it was a century).  “You can’t come for a fortnight.  Well, perhaps it will take a week to fix on a place.”

“Hardly, for see here, I found a letter from Acton when I came in.  They have found an unsophisticated elysium at Kyve Clements, and are in raptures which they want us to share-—rocks and waves and all.”

“And rooms?”

“Yes, very good rooms, enough for us all,” was the answer, flinging into her lap a letter from his friend, a somewhat noted artist in water-colours, whom, after long patience, Carey’s school friend, Miss Cartwright, had married two years ago.

There was nothing to say against it, only grandmamma observed, “I am too old to catch things; Joe will let me stay and keep house for him.”

“Please, please let me stay with granny,” insisted Janet; “then I shall finish my German classes.”